Early Childhood Nature Resources

Information

This group is a place for all of us who love nature and young children to share resources we have found to be helpful and inspiring. Please post stories, programs, workshop materials, handouts for parents, books, links, and photos.

Words of Wisdom

Teaching children about the natural world should be treated as one of the most important events in their lives. Thomas Berry, Dream of the Earth

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in. Rachel Carson, A Sense of Wonder

Discussion Forum

We are opening a forest school in Port Macquarie, NSW and we're very interested and keen on having some training. It seems like Claire will only be back to Australia in September but is anyone else…Continue

We are just about to start our second year of our Little Sprouts nature based early learning center and I just wondered if any of you guys are doing this and if you have any BIG ideas for us to…Continue

As many of you know, the green schoolyard movement is growing rapidly and flourishing around the world. Schools near and far are reimagining their grounds, replacing their extensive paved surfaces…Continue

Hi Patricia, wonderful to see your blog and that your getting kids in touch with nature. I work at an environmental preschool and write an article bi-monthly for the City of Aspen's Kids First newsletter. My main focus is how to simply connect kids with nature. I understand the time involved in snow clothes! Winter is a great time to do tracking, we took old blocks of wood, foam sheet (the kids love to cut it) and made our own track stamps. I did realistic ones and the kids did their own, we looked at books to see if we could identify who's tracks they were. The Library has many great books! Science with snow and ice is great too, the list go's on! If you would like to email me I can list some great tracking books, and more ideas at wildwoodschool@comcast.net Maybe your work will catch on and they'll do more in the classroom on a daily basis.

I understand your predicament - I'm an occasional sub teacher and so I carry a portable "grab'n'go" set of resources. I use a mixture of wheeled suitcases (2) and bags called SmartsackPeg bags that children can carry out independently - down stairs, through doors etc as the handles slip onto the children's arms.

I also bring the outside in, quite regularly. A lot of the posts on my blog may be of use and have a look at my blogroll index - some very inventive and real "Power Bloggers" inc Kari Svenneby below.

Chipper is based in Marin but we do a lot of activities in the schools. I'd love to send you a kit. It's great to do stretching and singing exercises and we also encourage teachers to download the coloring pages on our site for a life size Memory Game. The above would take a half hour. Please look at our little ambassador of the great outdoors and email directly if I can send you some things - stephanie@iagmedia.net Cheers to you!

I am a preschool teacher in Minnesota (not where my picture was taken- that's in Mexico!). I teach a class for preschoolers called Ms. Pat's Nature Club. I would like to invite you to check out my blog at patriciagilkerson.blogspot.com and help me out with ideas and suggestions. Each class (4 in all) gets approximately 30 minutes every other week for activities and this time of year, we have to do inside things. My half hour would be completely taken up by putting on coats, boots and snowpants if we went out! Most of the ideas I get from books are for extended activities or projects that there is no room for. I don't have my own classroom and have to tote everything with me. Ideas? And thanks, in advance!